s we didn t account for and here, we have a new one. war. these sites were not designed to withstand the conditions of war and now what we re seeing is the conditions that exist when a foreign power occupies a nuclear plant. you have problems with maintenance. staff moral. you re worried about could additional conflict lead to the complete loss of power. and so you have a situation that we re not really prepared for and that the people in ukraine who run these plants are probably short staffed, exhausted. very uncomfortable with who they re dealing with. and are not able to do the maintenance that s necessary. at the chernobyl plant, they ve been running on diesel generators and things have to be sacrificed when you do that. and some of the things that are sacrificed can affect the chance of a nuclear accident happen.
concerned about the staff at chernobyl, who hadn t been able to rotate out since the 23rd of february, and he s again repeated his offer to go to ukraine to negotiate between the sides about this issue to ensure that the safety and security of these nuclear sites can be maintained. meanwhile, as the fighting continues ukraine s president zelensky has called on volunteers across the world to join a special international brigade of the ukrainian army. nearly 20,000 foreign citizens have applied to go there to fight, according to ukraine s foreign minister dmytro kuleba quoted in local media. i spoke to kacper rekawek, from the center for research on extremism to ask who are they and what s motivating them. it s everybody, really.
uses chemical weapons in ukraine. now, he didn t elaborate further saying he didn t wish to speak out about the intelligence. but a member of ukraine has another concern about this intelligence, the nuclear. we ve seen suffering from bombing, from starvation, dehydration, all other things. so they end up with the nuclear threat. i m more concerned about the nuclear threat because what we see happening with the chernobyl plant disconnected from the grid. europe s fourth round of tough sanctions has just kicked in. russia will lose its most favored nation status in the european markets, that means no benefits being in the world
there. and izume as well, there s bombing in the area that makes it difficult to open up a corridor and get things out and obviously desperately, desperately needed supplies in, kate. just to be clear and transparent on everyone, in the city of mariupol, we are continuing to gather information on the ground. this is a city that has been under attack for days now. we re going to be bringing new information as soon as we get it. at the same time, scott, i wanted to ask you about the other really terrifying situation that ukraine officials are warning about. the concerns at the chernobyl nuclear site which has been knocked off the power grid. what are you hearing about this? reporter: kate, so the ukranian nuclear regulator already didn t have access to the remote sensing system or the remote monitoring system. now two power lines into the chernobyl plant had been knocked
reporter: first, russia seized chernobyl, site of the world s worst nuclear meltdown. a week later, europe s largest nuclear plant. now, with power cut from chernobyl and more than 200 plant workers held hostage, alarm bells are ringing. translator: this was terror at a new level. ukraine has 15 nuclear plants, and the russian military has forgotten chernobyl and the world s tragedy. we cannot go on like this. there has to be clear understandings or clear clear commitments not to, um, go anywhere near a nuclear facility when it comes to nuclear to military operations. reporter: some have called the targeting of such sensitive infrastructure a war crime. do you think these nuclear plants are going to be targeted specifically? they are extremely callous, they don t give a damn about civilian casualties. but i d be surprised if they were going to deliberately target with missiles or artillery, nuclear power plants.